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“The Meaning of It” [by David Lehman]
All poetry is experimental poetry. All experiments are failed experiments. All poetry is personal. You can argue about it all you like, but usually we go on one assumption, not being too worried if the answer…
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History: The Great American Lullaby [by Natalie Diaz]
Words become words because we need them. I don’t know what they are before that—impulses, energy, trilobites, Hydrogen—who knows. But once they become words, I believe in them, the power and the glory of…
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Blast from Ze Past: What I was thinking about in 1990. . .[by David Lehman]
Derridadaism [1] "Philosophy? Cela suffit!" [2]Said the man Named de Man. [3]J. Hillis Miller: J. Phyllis Diller. [4] 1. Geoffrey Hartman's term in Saving the Text. An alternative spelling, Derrida(da)ism, subversively reveals the Russian…
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So You Think You Know English Literature [by David Lehman]
(1) When Shakespeare wrote about “bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang,” he was referring to(a) the indomitable will of the British people(b) the lamentable condition of churches in the south of…
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In All Ways An American Poet: David Lehman’s “New and Selected Poems” at The New School [by Nora Brooks]
A volume of collected work is an opportunity to reflect on the trajectory of a poet’s life and career, and David Lehman’s essential new book, New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 2013), reveals threads of…
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If What I Mean Is Hummingbird, If What I Mean Is Fall Into My Mouth [by Natalie Diaz]
In Mojave, the words we use to describe our emotions are literally dragged through our hearts before we speak them—they begin with the prefix wa-, a shortened form of iiwa, our word for heart…
